Facebook Chooses San Jose For New WiFi Service

A faster way to reach ... Facebook

By Scott Budman •Published April 13, 2016•Updated on April 13, 2016 at 11:27 am

Facebook, with its F8 Developer Conference, has been dominating the conversation in San Francisco for the last couple of days. On Wednesday, the social media giant looked a bit south to San Jose to make some news: It's new wifi service will make its debut in San Jose.

Facebook calls the service "Terragraph." A Facebook spokesman says, unlike Google Fiber, Facebook will pump out its service by putting metal boxes on lightpoles in downtown San Jose.

The signal will piggyback off of San Jose's current wifi, but Facebook insists the service will be faster and more robust with "Terragraph."

Local

This is good news for San Jose, which calls itself the "Capitol of Silicon Valley," but really doesn't have the wifi speed to back it up. The city was hoping to be the local launch pad for Google Fiber, but the search company chose San Francisco instead.

But the densely-packed high-tech San Jose downtown is welcoming Facebook with open arms. “San José is proud to work with a global tech leader like Facebook," says San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, who says his city wants to "pilot a next-generation technology that can help us achieve these goals and support research to support communities around the world.”